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I had a pretty rough weekend. It turns out I was 95 days into my Fanatic badge and somehow didn't log in on the 96th day. I have no idea how that happened as I had made every attempt to log on every day since the badge was offered; I even occasionally did so from the golf course on my iPhone.

Anyway, that ruined my weekend. I was so pissed I bought a new car and drank to excess.

Today, I log in to see this:

win http://john.cognitivedelay.com/images/free-telerik.png

This offer is stunning. Telerik has given away a developer license to their Premium Collection for free (valued at $1,299) to SO users with 10k reputation.

I just wanted to say thank you to both StackOverflow and Telerik for setting up such an awesome promotion.

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    Was this just a one day offer? – Kev Sep 8 '09 at 15:43
  • I'm not certain on the details, from the query string I can gather that it's a September promotion. I didn't want to post the banner link here because it looks to be custom for each user – John Rasch Sep 8 '09 at 15:45
  • Just as I commented one of these appeared on SO. Registered for a copy :) – Kev Sep 8 '09 at 15:45
  • I clicked the C# tag to get the ad. – Vinko Vrsalovic Sep 8 '09 at 16:04
  • Ah ha, so it does work! Glad to see, since obviously my rep isn't quite there yet. Are you seeing anything else? (In theory: you should, but it's kinda hard to test) – Alex Papadimoulis Sep 8 '09 at 16:23
  • @Alex - there's an Intel ad that appears to be new, but other than that I don't see anything unusual – John Rasch Sep 8 '09 at 16:38
  • @Vinko: It is pretty much any tag. I tried linux for and the ad displays the same. – OscarRyz Sep 8 '09 at 17:06
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    That's funny. Buying cars and drinking to excess is one of the many things keeping me from getting 10k rep... – Rob Allen Sep 8 '09 at 19:06
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    Terrible grammar would be a third. – Rob Allen Sep 8 '09 at 19:07
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    Okay...as an aside...how can you discover what days you logged in on? I'm working towards a Fanatic badge as well, of course... – beska Sep 8 '09 at 20:27
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    @beska - I emailed them because I was certain I should have earned it and they sent me the logs of each day I logged in until Aug. 29th where I apparently missed it by about 10 minutes... – John Rasch Sep 8 '09 at 20:35
  • It's easier making sure you log in each day in the UK as the Stack Overflow day aligns with the "real" day (ignoring daylight saving). – ChrisF♦ Sep 9 '09 at 8:15
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    Now the question is what horrible software are we going to write with these libraries? We should all write SO clones! – Welbog Sep 9 '09 at 11:05
  • +1 for drinking to excess. I know it's not something to laugh about, but your frankness made me chuckle. – Super Long Names are Hilarious Sep 9 '09 at 23:55
  • I don't code in a MS environment, but that is pretty darn cool... – Stu Thompson Sep 15 '09 at 8:52

11 Answers 11

Active Oldest Votes
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We're glad you guys enjoy the offer. It's the least we can do for those of you that donate so much of your time to help make other developers lives easier. Since that's Telerik's goal (make developer's live easier), we wanted to reward those people that go above and beyond on SO.

And for anyone not quite up to 10k, now you've got some extra incentive! (if you're a .NET developer, of course...)

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    Kudos. Good marketing, and good support to the community at the same time. I like it. – beska Sep 8 '09 at 20:29
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    Personally not the biggest fan of the product, but I too tip my hat to your marketing skill, generosity, and community support. /applaud – bananakata Sep 8 '09 at 20:43
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    Awesome concept... I will admit thought this is one of those jealousy makes you nasty moments :) – BinaryMisfit Sep 8 '09 at 21:45
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    I'm in no way a .NET person but I completely agree with other commenters that this is a fantastic and generous gesture. I may just do some research on the product anyway so that if I'm ever talking to someone who could use it, I can point them your way. (I make an effort to reward business practices I like ;-) – David Z Sep 9 '09 at 0:26
  • Cheers Todd and Jeff. Got my application processed and I'm well pleased. I've favoured Telerik products in the past and this offer was a real peach. :) – Kev Sep 9 '09 at 15:37
  • @Todd: This is awesome! Thanks! – RSolberg Sep 15 '09 at 8:04
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    Some more awesome details: Comes with Source Code, 12 Months subscription and unlimited deployment. – Michael Stum♦ Sep 15 '09 at 11:19
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    @Todd: Any chance the promotion is still available or coming back? – Eric J. May 14 '10 at 20:18
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If anyone out there is listening, I'd like to see Microsoft pony up MSDN subscriptions for high rep users...

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    Echo that ... – bananakata Sep 8 '09 at 20:37
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    blink I thought for a moment you wanted Microsoft to offer ponies to high rep users.. – John Fouhy Sep 10 '09 at 2:10
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    TBH, I think it's more realistic to expect ponies than MSDN Subscriptions, but hell, I wouldn't say "No" to one. – Michael Stum♦ Sep 15 '09 at 8:19
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    I want MS to offer unicorns to high rep users! – Carl Manaster May 14 '10 at 14:20
  • Hmm, I wonder if this is the best forum to expect an answer. Not likely. Listen, every developer, high or low reputation, can register for BizSpark to get 3 years of MSDN Subscription. If you take the registration seriously, it's difficult to be rejected. blog.jerrynixon.com/p/bizspark.html – Jerry Nixon Mar 18 '14 at 16:39
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Yep, this is something special that Telerik wanted to do, and it is tied to 10k rep users exclusively.

So if you're interested, definitely take advantage of the offer!

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    This is the sort of thing that gets a website (and it's advertisers) to that next level of Total Coolness. – EBGreen Sep 8 '09 at 16:14
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    Almost makes me wish I did .NET. – mmyers Sep 8 '09 at 16:24
  • did this come from a fixed list or do you auto trigger it on going 10K. I ask because I hit that today and would certainly give it a try. – ShuggyCoUk Sep 8 '09 at 16:55
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    How are you verifying accounts? Filling the Telerik form out seems pretty iffy, like I could put anyone's Stackoverflow profile in there. – Welbog Sep 8 '09 at 16:55
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    @mmyers lol ... Me too... I actually click the link and thought: What If I start ... no no no no... Ctrl+F4 – OscarRyz Sep 8 '09 at 17:01
  • Maybe that's why they review applications, they send accessing IP to Jeff, who matches logs with Telerik's logs – Vinko Vrsalovic Sep 8 '09 at 18:13
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    @Welbog: not so much anyone's profile, as any 10K user's profile. IE, since it's obvious here that mmyers isn't going to use his copy, it looks like I could put his profile url in to get a 2nd license and no one would ever know. – Joel Coehoorn Sep 8 '09 at 18:38
  • @Welbog, they should require people put their email on their user page. – Mark Harrison Sep 24 '09 at 7:41
  • Actually, I might give it a shot anyway. An offer like that is hard to turn down. – mmyers Sep 29 '09 at 17:24
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Thanks also for posting about this on meta. My office blocks ads company-wide, and so I might never have seen it. Even if they didn't, I normally gloss over ads so fast I might not have noticed.

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Yes, Thanks Telerik! I primarily program computers that don't have screens, but it's nice to expand one's horizons. I feel kinda like this guy, except for "most interesting" part of course...

http://markharrison.net/stackoverflow/telerik.jpg

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Thanks for posting it just because I mentally filter out ads. I went looking for it under Tools and only then noticed I'd been mentally editing it out and it was on the right hand ad. :)

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    And to think of all the other awesome things you'd be missing out by (mentally) ignoring ads! – Alex Papadimoulis Sep 8 '09 at 17:06
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Can I pretty pretty pretty please now have the feature to move my rep from SU and MSO to SO?

Please

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    Me too. There's no way I'm going to get nearly 4K rep in less than a month :) – ChrisF♦ Sep 8 '09 at 20:15
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Anyway, that ruined my weekend. I was so pissed I bought a new car and drank to excess.

Hopefully not at the same time of course...

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3

Damn, I would love to have these controls but 10K points is far too much. Can't this threshold be lowered a little, say to, for example 1157 points? A very round number! :-)

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1

Is this a good thing?

So a lot of 10K+ users will have a free copy of Telerik. Given that 10K+ users answer a lot of questions, will they push other people to use Telerik, as they will now have personal experience with it?

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    Well, I'm sure that's the idea behind the promotion, yes. But no one is twisting their arms to promote reviews or anything like that...they are not beholden to Telerik in any way (other than perhaps a sense of gratitude.) But they'll be familar with the product, so they'll be able to present it as an option, if its appropriate. Just sounds like good (and clean) marketing strategy to me... – beska Sep 8 '09 at 20:25
  • If something is good, what's wrong with promoting it? – mmx Sep 9 '09 at 8:44
  • I just claimed my license, and nowhere did I have to sign a form promising eternal loyalty to their product. I'm still free to say "their product sucks, don't use it" if I feel that way. But if it turns out to be the best product ever, why shouldn't I encourage others to use it? – jalf Sep 9 '09 at 9:55
  • Others have to pay full price to use it, as you are getting it for free you are less likely to have considered if there is another "good enough" option that is cheaper. (I think when you given a free product you should declare the fact in any answer that mansions the product. ) – Ian Ringrose Sep 9 '09 at 14:15
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    Maybe getting some "influential" users to push sales is part of it. Sounds like there's a certain amount of "thank you" involved as well, so it's possible some telerik devs have had questions answered here. But mostly I think it's about making sure paying customers with questions will be able to get help via stackoverflow. At least, that's where I think they stand to gain the most from putting their product into the hands of people who answer a lot of questions. – Joel Coehoorn Sep 9 '09 at 19:29
  • Is putting a point of view across that some people don't like a good reason do get a down vote? We do need to consider both sides of an offer like this, even if we do decide we like it in the end. – Ian Ringrose Sep 11 '09 at 11:06
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    @Ian. This is meta. We downvote for point of views that people don't agree with. Voting on Meta is a special beast. Welcome to our world. – BinaryMisfit Sep 15 '09 at 8:20
  • That's a risk with any promotion, yes. On the other hand, there are usually more than 1 answer and community voting on SO, so I guess that other alternatives will continue to be posted and upvoted. Also, not every 10k user is the same. I claimed my license, but I always try to code my applications with as few external dependencies as possible, so any 3rd Party component is only the second thing I try. – Michael Stum♦ Sep 15 '09 at 8:25
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I'd like to take advantage of this (I have 17k rep on SO) but I can't find a link to the promo page any more? The ad isn't showing up for me no matter how many pages I view on SO. Is the promo finished?

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  • Try this link: stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/c%23 – jjnguy Sep 9 '09 at 23:19
  • I get the add every time I click the link above. – jjnguy Sep 9 '09 at 23:20
  • Just kidding...not every time. But that is where I got to the add the first time and when I linked to it here. – jjnguy Sep 9 '09 at 23:24
  • So I found it again. This time it was questions tagged 'Java'. If you are still having trouble I can post the actual link to the promotion. But I'd rather not do that if I don't have to. – jjnguy Sep 9 '09 at 23:26

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